Consider Me by Becka Mack caught my attention from its place on the library shelf. I couldn’t not pick it up with the tag “Endlessly sexy and funny” (Hannah Grace from the front cover). That’s exactly what I like in a book! My favourite surprises were that it was a hockey romance (a different cover than I’m used to for hockey romances), Becka Mack is Canadian (which I love), and she’s a teacher (go teachers!). I got excited to start reading the book right away (I even managed to keep it dry despite biking home from the library in a rain shower that day).
Playboy NHLer Carter meets his best friend’s girlfriend’s best friend and everything changes. Olivia doesn’t trust Carter and his very public lifestyle of serial dating. But maybe Carter could change? As Carter and Olivia figure out how to move from a crush into a relationship, they realize that true happiness in a relationship takes work. And like all romances, things are all right in the end. Especially since they both love Oreos.
Consider Me is a story that looks at what it takes to make a relationship work. And that sometimes, taking a risk is better than living in fear (mess and all).
What I enjoyed about this book was the humour. Only a Canadian could write this line: “I wanna tap that man like a maple tree.” Although Mack deals with some of those formative moments in a new relationship (learning to communicate, learning to work together, learning to be better, learning to trust, learning to be vulnerable), the humour throughout the book kept me engaged. I couldn’t wait to see what Carter would pull next to get Olivia’s attention, and I knew that Olivia would react in a way to surprise Carter at every turn.
As an editor, I thought that Mack did a great job of creating two very distinct voices. The choices in words, word order, and physical actions all came through distinctly for both Carter and Olivia. I think that the unique voices are the strength of this book, and what keeps readers invested until the end. The transformation and the angst of young love is there on the page in lots of awkward and wonderful detail.
One recommendation I would have as an editor is to work on cutting down the overall wordcount for this book. Cutting or combining some of the scenes would make this book a little more digestible for the readers. More specifically, some of the narration scenes could be combined together to speed up the pace of the book. It’s well written, but it’s over 500 pages, which is hard for some readers to take on and finish. But Becka Mack packed a lot into this book, and I can see it would be a challenge deciding which scenes to leave out.
Here are some of my favourite lines from Consider Me:
- “I genuinely didn’t realize they made people this ostentatious, and yet when he strolls right by the reporters after his game and lifts me into his arms, butterflies still erupt in my stomach.”
- “The longer I stay, the more I see, the easier it becomes for me to fall.”
- “What if I fall in love with you?” “Then I’ll fall with you, too, Ollie girl.”
I can see why Becka Mack’s book has taken off. The writing is great and the characters are interesting. And I’m excited to see that Becka Mack was able to get picked up by Simon and Schuster. Happy reading!
